Prohibition Has Improved Conditions, Says Editor, Nov. 28, 1921

Is Prohibition Effective?

Some times the average citizen, the ?? Of the mine individual who has his faults and can sympathize with other folks who have theirs, wonders if prohibition, after all, is effective. He hears of blockade stills in certain sections of the state, in localities near home, and becomes pessimistic. He hears of drinking in the woods and is told that liquor is sold rather freely in Hickory on Saturday afternoons. He naturally begins to doubt.

On at least three Saturday nights during the past several weeks, the editor of the Record has ridden over Catawba county roads. He has seen automobiles whirling past, but has never seen any evidence of drinking. He has seen farmers in their wagons driving slowly home; has noted buggies homeward bound. The drivers were not shouting and singing. They were not lashing their teams. They were quiet citizens.

Thirty years ago, as a boy, the writer passed over country roads. Barrooms flourished on many street corners, and just outside of town, when one’s liquor began losing out, he could get a few more drinks. Saturday was “drink” day in many towns then, and the country roads at night were never quiet. Yelling men, drunk or half drunk, lashed their teams, cursed or slept in their wagons. Thousands of dollars passed from farmers into the hands of saloon keepers. Probably only a small per cent of farmers drank liquor back in those days, but it appeared that nearly everybody got drunk on Saturday night.

It is not that way now anywhere in North Carolina. Most of the drinking is done in dark places—and comparatively the amount consumed is as a drop in the bucket. One is forced to the conclusion that the greatest part of the liquor now is drunk by people who live in the towns, the proportion must have been about equal.

Conditions have improved so much that every thoughtful person, whether he has an “appetite” or not, should try to make them still better. The new year, which is just five weeks off, ought to find every good citizen in the state resolved to do his part towards reducing the consumption of liquor.

The lead editorial in the Nov. 28, 1921 issue of the Hickory Daily News